Billing comprises a well-understood area of endeavor. Generally speaking, “billing” refers to activities to determine, and support the receipt of, amounts that are due in exchange for goods or services. This often comprises one or more acts to provide notice to a billed party regarding compensation that is presently due and payable. “Billing” can also include follow-up actions pertaining to the processing of received responses and/or late or incorrect responses. Digital computing platforms are often employed to facilitate billing activities for a given entity.
Insurance carriers often provide their products to end users via an intermediary agency. This agency may comprise essentially any legally-recognized entity ranging from a private individual to a partnership, corporation, or the like. Pursuant to such arrangements the agency typically receives payments from the end users and then provides some or all of these receipts to the carrier while either retaining a portion as their commission or receiving a return payment from the insurance carrier as a commission. (Brokers sometimes also have a similar relationship to insurance carriers. Although sometimes this description will use the more generic expression “producers” to refer to both agencies and brokers, it should be understood that for billing purposes “agencies” and “brokers” are sufficiently similar to one another that a specific reference to one in this description shall also comprise a reference to the other.)
There have traditionally been two distinct approaches by which such an agency will make eventual payment on their agency bill policies to a carrier in the insurance industry. Pursuant to a first approach, often referred to as a statement-billing approach (and sometimes referred to as a company bill or a broker bill), the carrier calculates a bill and forwards the bill to the agency. The carrier then receives a corresponding payment from the agency. Frequently the received payment does not correspond exactly to the statement as a result of disagreements about commission amounts, terms of service, effective dates of the policy, claims made, and many other possible factors. In these cases an extensive negotiation and resolution process typically follows.
Pursuant to a second very-different approach, often referred to as an account-current approach, the agency calculates the payment and forwards to the carrier an expected promise to pay an identified amount. The carrier is responsible for examining the promise to pay, notifying the agency of any discrepancies between the promise and the carrier's expectation (discrepancies may arise for many of the same reasons as described in the case of statement-billing), and engaging with the agency to resolve the discrepancies. Later, the agency makes good on this promise (typically updated after resolving the discrepancies) and makes the corresponding payment to the carrier.
Such billing approaches, taken separately or together, present a considerable number of different expectations and actions. This, in turn, gives rise to a large number of possible ways that a given billing scenario can deviate from an expected scenario. The management of such deviations, sometimes referred to as exceptions management, presents a significant challenge. While computer-based billing systems can excel at tracking billing-related exceptions, to date such systems have not excelled at making this information especially useful to the end user. In particular, it can be easy to swamp an end user with a considerable amount of information that, by its very volume and via a typically amorphous presentation, can lead to a poor utilization of management and follow-up resources.
Elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention. Certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. The terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions by persons skilled in the technical field asset forth above except where different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.